In the western industrial nations, every year thousands die directly from various forms of shock or the immediate results of the shock. As shock, one understands an acutely occurring, faulty regulation of the blood supply of vital organs due to blood pressure decrease. From this acutely occurring faulty regulation, there frequently develop diffuse or selective organ damages and protracted organ failure which, in about 10 to 30% of the cases, leads to death (cf., e.g., Pschyrembel, Klin. Worterbuch, de Gruyter Berlin, 1992). Such shock reactions can occur on the basis of acute and chronic infections, in the case of pre-damaged patients (post-operative), treatment with cytostatics, etc. or also without recognizable cause, mostly as a result of otherwise harmless bacterial infections. One differentiates between anaphylactic, bacterial, septic, post-traumatic, cardiogenic, haemorrhagic, hypovolaemic, neurogenic and toxic forms of shock. A common factor appears to exist in the coexistence of an altered defense behavior of the body with regard to frequently harmless microbes on the basis of simultaneous and shortly previously occurring traumatic, surgical, immunological, medicamentous or toxic previous damaging of the organism (cf., e.g., Bochner, B. S. et al., N. Engl. J. Med., 1991, 3241 1785). Hitherto, a uniform and safe therapy process, especially of the post-traumatic, post-operative, toxic or septic shock has not existed (Barron, R. L., Clin. Pharm. 1993, 12, 829). Dependable criteria for the assessment of the prognosis and of the therapy success in the case of shock illnesses do not exist. Therefore, specific, recognized and rationally based therapy concepts have not been developed, presumably because of the absence of prognostic parameters.
Therefore, the task exists to find a new process for the diagnostic assessment and monitoring, as well as a medicament for the therapy, of states of shock in humans.